


In Which Everybody Ignores Grant’s Wishes...Again

by orphan_account



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Hurt, Hurt/Comfort, Mission Related, Saving the Day, Team Bonding, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-08
Updated: 2014-01-08
Packaged: 2018-01-08 00:56:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1126473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They really should listen to him when he tells them to run.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Which Everybody Ignores Grant’s Wishes...Again

**Author's Note:**

  * For [leoraine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/leoraine/gifts).



He’s not sure how he ended up on his back. Truth be told, it’s not a place he spends much time. He doesn’t sleep much, he’s not overall fond of fixing up cars, and well, okay, he’ll spend _some_ time on his back for certain activities, but he prefers to be on top. 

But he’s definitely on his back right now. And even stranger, there are hands pushing on his shoulders and a voice that sounds a lot like Skye’s telling him to “Stay _down_ , damn you, one of your biceps is bigger than all of me together, so it’s not like I can hold you down on my own.”

To which, he says, “Bwuh?” He’s pretty sure he told Skye to run.

Overhead, the industrial fluorescent lights threaten to burn a hole in his corneas. If he could just sit up, he could look at something besides them, and besides, he hates being on his back anyway. It makes him feel like an overturned turtle, and that’s not a sensation Grant likes. He bats at Skye’s hands in annoyance.

“Oh, god, he’s going to get us all killed. Jemma—help—”

He hears something like a slither, like cloth moving over tile, and then Simmons is speaking, right over his right ear. “I think I’ve got some of the sweet dreams serum we can use on him, perhaps?”

Grant is positive that if he told Skye to run, he told Simmons to run, too.

“I don’t think either of us has the upper body strength to haul two hundred pounds of unconscious mancake out of this facility,” Skye says. “Probably shouldn’t drug him just yet.”

Grant wants to object. Mancake? And also, he’s starting to remember things, like gossamer strands of memory trickling back into his brain. He knows for a fact that he told both of the women to run, to save themselves, to leave him behind. And yet, here he is, staring up at the light burning a hole through his eyeball, listening to them bicker.

And, oh, right, the facility’s rigged to blow and they really don’t have any time for this.

He tries to speak, but if his eyeball is on fire, his throat is ten thousand times worse. It’s like somebody yanked out his tongue and poured napalm right into his gullet. Definitely got choked at some point. 

That’ll be a problem if they get out of here.

“Go,” he manages to say, and it’s hoarse as hell. “Leave me.”

The ladies’ bickering pauses. “Well, he’s cognizant—that’s a good sign, at least?” Simmons says.

“Still doing that stupidly noble thing. Guess that guard didn’t hit him too hard. No, Ward, stay down. You sit up and they’ll shoot us.”

“Sh-shoot?”

“Coulson’s got ’em pinned down, but we’re kind of sitting ducks if we sit up. So instead we’re lying…” He can hear the pause as Skye searches for something clever. But all she can come up with is, “Down.”

It makes him actually want to laugh. Or he would want to laugh if his head weren’t _killing_ him.

“Gonna blow,” he says instead.

“Fitz is working on that,” Simmons says. “Speaking of which—”

“I’m working on it, aren’t I?” comes the irritable voice over the comm. Grant winces; it echoes hollowly through his skull, thudding around every exposed nerve in his brain. “Can’t work any faster with you jabbering in my ear, can I?”

He squints and sees Simmons flinch a little. She touches her ear, which is probably her deactivating the comm. “He gets cranky when he doesn’t eat,” she says by way of apology. 

If they get out of this alive, Grant should probably have a talk with the engineer about that.

“Should’ve left me,” he says. “Too dangerous.”

“Dangerous?” Skye laughs. “Because we’re literally lying on the ground while Hydra agents shoot overhead and the whole place is rigged to go ker-boom? You need way more danger than that before we abandon you to Hydra agents in weird steampunk Nazi suits, Agent Mancake.”

Grant’s groan has nothing to do with the pain ringing through his skull.

“Hey,” Skye says, and she sounds almost genuinely offended.

“I think I’d groan, too, if you started calling me Agent Mancake,” Simmons says.

“You wouldn’t be Agent Mancake. You’d be Agent Hot British Science Broad.”

“That would only make me groan harder. And good god, Skye, you are no longer allowed to name anything. I should _at least_ have an alliterative nickname like Bioengineering Bit—”

“Exfil plan?” Grant asks because if they get started, they’ll go on forever and he knows this for a fact. He has video proof. “We do have a way of getting out of here, don’t we?”

He can’t see very well, but both women’s winces are perfectly clear. “Sort of?” Simmons asks. “We’re just hoping Coulson can hold them off until—”

She breaks off as the floorboards under Grant rumble with the familiar sound of an approaching C-130. The Cavalry has arrived. And judging from the sound of boots clanging away on the tiles, Hydra is not prepared for the Cavalry.

A moment later, the hands holding him down are tugging him up. His vision goes temporarily black and white, yellow sparks breaking in at the edges and skittering around. It’s like looking down a long tunnel so that he can kind of see Skye on his one side and Simmons on his other, but neither of them is really all that clear. What he does see is Coulson ahead, running with his gun and Grant’s gun and picking off any snipers before they can take out his team. Grant’s entire body feels like one giant mound of pain, but with his teammates’ encouragement, he puts one foot in front of the other until they’re finally breaking free of the facility and running up the cargo ramp of the Bus while May lays down cover fire. Simmons helps him to one of the cots in medical, by her lab, before she eases away and hugs Fitz hard, leaving Skye to tend to Grant by herself.

The Hydra facility’s explosion makes the entire Bus shudder as May flies them the hell out of there. 

He sits up on the cot, deliberately. It takes half a bottle of water before his throat is clear enough to talk.

“Should’ve left me behind,” he says.

Skye readies the usual round of bandages and painkillers that Grant has already decided he’s not going to take. “Aw, c’mon,” she says. “You really expected us to leave you back there to roast with some crazy ex-Nazis? Your death should be way more dramatic than that. Like, getting blown up by a tank while swinging on a vine and rescuing some Gilda Radner-lookalike after having taken down, like, three dictatorships with a fork or something.”

He’s not really sure what to say with that, but “Thanks?” seems safe enough.

Skye grins at him. “As many times as you’ve pulled our asses out of buildings that are about to blow, and still somehow you think we wouldn’t do exactly the same thing for you, bucko? You may be my training officer, but dude, you’ve got a lot to learn.”

He makes a face. Policy states that a mission of this level is bigger than one agent, and certainly bigger than him. Coulson knows that, May knows that, but the team came back for him anyway. It makes him feel a little warm and uncomfortable, though that feeling turns to outright agony when Skye splashes disinfectant onto the cuts on his arm. He tries not to flinch.

Apparently, he’s not successful, for Skye winces. “Oops—sorry. You know, this would be a lot easier if you were lying down, you know.”

Grant shakes his head. “Spent enough time on my back, thanks.”

“Suit yourself, mister.”

He sits in silence for an uncomfortable five minutes while she disinfects and sews and bandages. She’s getting pretty good at field medicine. The first time she had to patch him up, there had been a lot of, “Euw, this is nothing like cloth, A.C., you’re a dirty liar!” and a lot of swearing. But now she hums under her breath, probably some song he’ll never recognize because any music created after 1980 really isn’t worth his time.

“Hey, Skye?” he finally says.

She ties off his stitches easily. “Hey, Ward?”

“Thanks for coming back for me.”

“Anytime, bucko.” And she gives him a grin and a pat on his thankfully uninjured shoulder before she strips off the gloves and leaves, presumably to go fetch Coulson. He hears her mutter something under her breath about not looking a thing like Gilda Radner and being grateful for it, but he chooses to ignore it.

It’s nice to have somebody watch his back.


End file.
